Wine Country Fika...

...with something of a critter theme. I didn't notice it as I was setting it up, but the glasses and the table have fish themes and I love the wine label. The glasses also have fish on them and they are all swimming the same direction...except one. We started out with a dozen of these glasses but are now down to a mere three...The store where I got them has gone out of business (like so many others) but I must see if I can find them somewhere. It's not coffee and cake, but since we DO live in wine country, this IS the way we tend to socialize...at least after noon....
Apologies to Heanku, our host for November, but she DID tell us to figure out for ourselves what fika means....

We are getting real, honest-to-goodness rain today. We got caught short putting the covers over the porch furniture, but it's too late now. It's pouring, and we are couried in wondering why our house isn't warmer when the thermostat says 68. If it were 68 in here why would we be wrapped in blankets and wearing our coats?

Despite the rise in the price of materials, we have decided on a new treated wood porch* with black metal railings. Kathy's husband MIke, a contractor, is going to undertake the job and we are putting ourselves in his hands as he clearly knows what he's doing and is a really nice guy. He's also going to put in new attic and crawl space Vulcan vents which are  fire rated and apparently collapse (so embers can't get in) when the temperature rises due to fire....According to Mike, most houses catch fire because of wind blown embers hitting fencing attached to the house or that get in through the vents.

I'm learning a lot of things I never wanted to know about making a home more fire resistant. We already did the earthquake bit in Berkeley after the Loma Prieta quake shook quite a lot of homes off their foundations....

*Something called Thermory which is horribly expensive, but much nicer looking than composite. It is treated somehow to make it rot and fire resistant.